Personhood: The Measure of Life

Written by Scott Pruett

"A woman has a right to choose!"
"It's a private decision between me and my doctor."
"Every child should be a 'wanted' child."

These are some of the many arguments thrown up from abortion advocates, but such defenses completely miss the point of the debate. That point can be captured in the answer to one question: "What kind of thing is the unborn?" As pro-life apologist Scott Klusendorf says, "If it is not a person, then no justification is necessary to abort it; if it is a person, then no justification is adequate." If the fetus is a human person, with all the rights which that would entail, then it is murder to abort it - for any reason. Women have rights to choose many things, but murder is not one of them. We are permitted to do many things in private that are not acceptable in public, but murder is not among them. Having children out of love, desire, and proper planning is a marvelous thing, but we may not murder people, no matter how much they may be in the way of the individual or society. This issue is about defining the scope and rights of humanity, and it has profound consequences well beyond the boundaries of the abortion debate.

The Nature of Personhood

The first thing to note is that the language in this debate has been loaded in favor of the pro-abortion position, and for the most part the pro-lifers have been unresistant to this. The "baby," "child," or "unborn" has been turned into the "fetus," "embryo," or "blob of tissue." While words like "fetus," "embryo," "zygote," and "conceptus" have legitimate scientific meaning, we should understand that abortion advocates are intentional in their use of such words in order to "dehumanize" the child. Rightly applied, they merely represent phases in the developmental cycle of a human being. As we all were once teens and toddlers, so were we once fetuses and embryos.

Few people would earnestly disagree with the idea that the developing child is a human at any of these particular stages. After all, what else might we say that it is: a hamster, a turnip, or a stone? In fact, scientists have historically held that life (human life in this case) begins at conception. The real debate is not about what kind of organism it is, but whether or not it is a "person" - specifically, at what point the developing human becomes a "person."

The pro-life position contends that there is no relevant distinction between a "human" and a "person." In fact, distinguishing between these two is a metaphysical sleight-of-hand trick. To say that someone is "human" yet not a "person" is to say that they lack some necessary quality or qualification. In the mind of the abortion advocate, a "person" is someone who is a full member of society, with all the rights and protections which that entails. And their efforts are directed at disqualifying humans in the early developmental stages from personhood.

This differentiation between "human" and "person" implies that there are certain attributes or qualities that one must have in order to qualify as a person, and if one does not possess these then one's very life may be subject to the whims of the mother, the guardian, or the state. The fact that fetuses, in today's moral culture, may be disposed of says that "non-persons" are a class no better than property, or a tumorus growth. The implication of this division between person and non-person is enormous - there is no gradient here. The difference between the live, protected child and the candidate for termination is stark and profound.

Raising The Bar

So, what are these magical attributes that can turn a biomass into a baby? Many have been proposed, such as when there is a heartbeat, or brainwaves, or when a particular week of development has been reached. At present, the absolute line of demarcation in all states is "birth" - whenever that happens to occur. But anything suggested is arbitrary and subject to change depending on current opinion and who has control of the definition. One generation's murder becomes another's legal "medical procedure." And this also results in practical absurdities. Where being "in the womb" is the measure of personhood, the public outrage over a teen couple's disposal of their child is dependent on whether they allowed a doctor to do the dirty work one day, or waited till the next for its natural delivery and then pitched it into the dumpster themselves.

Those of the pro-life group are not the only ones to see the conflict here. Pro-abortion advocates such as Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer understand that the magical passage down the birth canal has no intrinsic power to bestow personhood upon a fetus. It is merely an event in the life of the unborn, and does not have any biological significance in ways that are otherwise used to measure "life" or "personhood." But instead of pressing upstream from an intuitive understanding of the humanity and value of the newborn, as pro-lifers seek to do, he downgrades the status of the infant to that of the pre-born. In fact, he proposes that "a period of 28 days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others."{1}

Singer is not a lone or radical voice in this regard. Peter Unger, philosophy professor at New York University, calls Singer "the most influential ethicist alive."{2} And other influential academics such as University of Manchester bioethicist, John Harris, and American University philosopher, Jeffrey Reiman express similar views. And on the floor of Congress, Senator Barbara Boxer gave her nod in this direction when she suggested that "when you bring your baby home" it only then should qualify for constitutional human rights.{3}

Down The Slippery Slope

As ugly and inconceivable as these ideas are, they are but milestones on the road down the pro-abortion path. This fact was acknowledge and anticipated early on by persons like Edward Pohlman of Planned Parenthood in 1967 when he said that, "Infanticide has a logical continuity with abortion."{4} Beyond conception, there is no unequivocal stage that the developing human may pass through that clearly marks her as a "person." This is cause for disagreement even within the "pro-choice" camp, and the reason why "personhood" may be defined to transcend even the boundaries of pregnancy itself. And to further compound matters, many of the attributes suggested to define personhood are applicable even to adults.

Francis Crick, Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the DNA molecule, suggested that "no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests, it forfeits the right to live."{5} This would make genetic fitness the measure of personhood (essentially, eugenics). The suggestion is made with infants in mind, but whatever criteria would be selected to determine such fitness would surely be applicable to older children and adults as well. And once the first "test" is established it is a certainty that the criteria will be broadened and the threshold raised. We could only hope to shelter ourselves from possible disqualification under a "grandfather clause."

Joseph Fletcher, famed author of "Situation Ethics", argued that "Humans without some minimum of intelligence or mental capacity are not persons, no matter how many of these organs are active, no matter how spontaneous their living processes are."{6} This is even more alarming in that mental capacity, in an otherwise healthy child, cannot be properly assessed until well after birth. Peter Singer's 28 days may need to be extended here. Additionally, there is a large adult demographic that would likely be disqualified from personhood, and these would be the very people least able to make a defense for themselves (other than the unborn).

John Harris defines a person as "a being that can value existence." He suggests that "persons who want to live are wronged by being killed," and "nonpersons or potential persons cannot be wronged in this way because death does not deprive them of something they value. If they cannot wish to live, they cannot have that wish frustrated by being killed."{7} This provides the justification for terminating the comatose and the Alzheimer patient. In fact, we might be forced to rethink our entire perspectives regarding suicide for even simple emotional "suffering."

Bioethicist Tom Beauchamp of Georgetown writes that some humans are "equal or inferior in moral standing to some nonhumans." That is, "non-persons" have no special claim to rights above and beyond that of a dog or chimp. "Unprotected persons would presumably include fetuses, newborns, psychopaths, severely brain-damaged patients, and various demented patients," he argues. "If this conclusion is defensible, we will need to rethink our traditional view that these unlucky humans cannot be treated in the ways we treat relevantly similar nonhumans. For example, they might be aggressively used as human research subjects and sources of organs."{8} And why not? If they are not "persons," then we are justified in treating them in any utilitarian fashion we choose. But if one agrees with the view of non-personhood, yet ascribes limited rights to these "unlucky humans," then this suggests that there could be degrees of personhood. The very foundation of equal rights is undermined, as "personhood" becomes a degreed property with people having these determining attributes to greater or lesser extents. In fact, almost every one of the measures proposed comes down to a matter of extent, degree, or severity. While being human vs. monkey carries a clear binary distinction, "personhood" brings shades of gray to the issue. It is no coincidence then that proponents of this view, such as Peter Singer, hold to some of the most extreme forms of animal rights advocacy.

The rational case for dehumanizing the imperfect, the infirm, and the mentally incompetent will surely be buttressed by many pragmatic arguments. After all, "think of the money we'd save in clearing out the mental wards and nursing homes, and we can save many more promising lives through organ harvesting and biological experimentation on these bodies." But it will all be couched in the language of compassion for the victims and their families, as well as the "good of society" - there must be some balm to soothe our violated moral intuition that the weak, needy, and suffering warrant our special care and protection. It is simply a matter of sophistry to persuade society that extermination is the most compassionate solution available. Note the comments of William Gaylin, professor of psychiatry and law at Columbia University: "It used to be easy to know what we wanted for our children, and now the best for our children might mean deciding which ones to kill. We've always wanted the best for our grandparents, and now that might mean killing them."{9}

It is but a small step to proceed from the point of viewing the termination of the defective as an act of compassion to perceiving it as our moral obligation to do so. Perhaps prophetically, James Sorenson of Boston University says, "American opinion is rapidly moving toward the position where parents who have an abnormal child may be considered irresponsible."{10} And in our litigious culture, one can easily imagine the "wrongful life" lawsuits to come.

The Slide to Auschwitz

Not to be alarmist, or underestimate the threshold of America's ethical prudence, but it is difficult to avoid comparison with the Nazi moral descent. Indeed, it is logically consistent with the path down which they proceeded. Once the door had been opened, after years of groundwork being laid through legalized abortion and eugenic ideology, the medical community began to practice their new brand of "treatment" in ever broadening scope. As Fredric Wertham documents, "Thousands . . . were killed at both psychiatric institutions and pediatric clinics. . . . Children with mental disease, mental defectives . . . even slightly retarded . . . handicapped children, children with neurological conditions and Mongoloid children." Eventually included were those with "badly modeled ears, bed wetters, those difficult to educate."{11} It started with infants and then moved to those between 3 and 17 years. At first, Jews were excluded because they did not deserve the "benefit of psychiatric euthanasia." But then they too were affected as their very race came to be categorized as "non-persons."

The road from "pro-choice" to a culture of death must take place in three steps: (1) Dehumanize the handicapped newborn; (2) Extend abortion to newborn babies; and (3) Prepare society to accept the idea of future involuntary euthanasia of the adult handicapped. C. Everett Koop has warned that "the first step is followed by the second step. You can say that if the first step is moral then whatever follows must be moral. The important thing, however, is this: whether you diagnose the first step as being one worth taking or being one that is precarious rests entirely on what the second step is likely to be."{12}

It should be noted that Hitler did not institute his death programs in a vacuum; it was the academics, physicians, and courts who were at work long before he came to power.{13} And it is no small coincidence that these things came on the heels of a national departure from orthodox Christianity, due in part to the influences of utilitarian philosophers such as G.W.F. Hegel and critical theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann. The one crucial difference between that culture and ours is that there was no pro-life movement in Germany to rise up in opposition as the slaughter began.

Christians (and other theists whom we may choose to partner with on this issue) should not only be horrified by and opposed to these things, but they may possess the only rational justification and defense against them. Peter Singer describes the new ethical formula for determining who lives and who dies as a "blow to the sanctity-of-life tradition" that comes from the "religious mumbo-jumbo" that "human beings are a special form of creation, made in the image of God, singled out from all other animals, and alone possessing an immortal soul."{14}

Singer has keenly identified the very thing which might stand in the way of his pogrom. It is our view of the sanctity of life, the uniqueness of humanity, and an objective moral view of our obligation to cherish, preserve, and protect even the most humble examples of it that gives weight and grounding to any resistance. If it is not objectively wrong to take the life of an innocent human being - no matter its condition - then any revulsion we feel or taboos against such things are mere social fashions.

We cannot depend on the moral intuitions of our increasingly secular culture to constrain the slide - the same culture that has been producing a generation that is not just academically illiterate, but morally and historically as well. Holland was the only country to take a stand against the Nazi euthanasia program, when all the Dutch physicians turned in their licenses in protest. In the post-war recovery, their actions were found praiseworthy in the court of world opinion. Let us not now follow the Dutch, who have lost their national memory and moral compass. It is they who are now in the vanguard of the modern euthanasia program; they are doing the very deeds they so abhorred just decades ago!

We cannot stand by and watch our own culture play out its reckless ideas to their "absolute ruddy end" (in C.S. Lewis' words). As it has been said, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. And history has, at minimum, taught us that evil has a good imagination and despises constraints.

References

1. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
2. Peter Unger, letter to the Wall Street Journal, cited in the "Princeton Weekly Bulletin," December 7, 1998.
3. Barbara Boxer, Congressional Record, (October 20, 1999) S12878-80.
4. Edward Pohlman, The Psychology of Birth Planning (Schenkman Publishing Company, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967).
5. Dr. Francis Crick, Pacific News Service, January 1978.
6. Joseph Fletcher, Humanhood: Essays in Biomedical Ethics (Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y., 1979), p. 135.
7. John Harris, "Wrongful Birth", in Bromham, D.R., Dalton, M.E. and Jackson, J.C. (eds.) Philosophical Ethics in Reproductive Medicine (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1990).
8. Tom Beauchamp, The Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1994).
9. Dr. William Gaylin, addressing the American Association of University Women, June 10, 1984.
10. Dr. James Sorenson, Associate Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences at Boston University, who spoke at a symposium, "Prenatal Diagnosis and Its Impact on Society."
11. Fredric Wertham, M.D., A Sign for Cain - An Exploration of Human Violence (Warner Paperback Library, 1969).
12. C. Everett Koop, M.D., "The Slide to Auschwitz," first appeared in The Human Life Review, Spring, 1977.
13. Leo Alexander, M.D., a consultant at the War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg, in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (241:39-47, July 14, 1949), stated that the first direct order for euthanasia was not issued by Hitler until 1939. He remarked, "Even before the Nazis took open charge in Germany, a propaganda barrage was directed against the traditional, compassionate 19th century attitudes toward the chronically ill, and for the adoption of a utilitarian, Hegelian point of view."
14. Peter Singer, journal of Pediatrics, vol. 72, No. 1, July 1983, p. 129.

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